Cheating in cricket isn't cool. Cheating isn't cool. 'Sandpaper-gate' reminds all of us that Australian cricketers are role models, and to see these men err so egregiously in pursuit of victory is terribly sad. It's not unreasonable to expect better from our sporting icons.
But I still can't help but find the reaction to this incident a little bit troubling.
Firstly, cheating in any form, from any person, is not ok. From monopoly to marriage, it's a betrayal of implicit trust. I'm sure most of us have over-stepped the boundary of honesty in some fashion at some point in our lives - I know I have - and it's never ok. If you're like me, all you can really hope for is the courage to own your mistake, the grace of forgiveness to come your way, and the resolve to strive with the best of your ability not to repeat your wrong. I'm wary of hanging these blokes out to dry for making an all too human error.
We might elevate them to level of heroes, but they are not heroes. They are ordinary (albeit well-paid) people with above-average hand-eye coordination. They ought not be scape-goated because our national pride has been compromised.
And that last point is telling. Australia has always had an unhealthy preoccupation with national sports. Don't get me wrong; playing and enjoying sport is a good thing. But using sport as a nationalist outlet is a sign of collective immaturity, which feels to me like a diversion from looking at our collective selves with dispassionate objectivity. If we are honest with ourselves, I think the real outrage here - the underlying pain - is that we can no longer consider ourselves superior. This was always a lie - we have never been superior - but cheating was something other countries did. We were better than that. We didn't need to cheat. We would win regardless.
Not anymore. We're just like everyone else. Which makes our obsession with sport look a bit silly. What are we celebrating, if not our belief in our own superiority? Our sportsmanship? Hardly. In cricket at least our sportsmanship died with Ian Chappell, and we've been doing our level best to win at all costs ever since. And we didn't just win; we gloated. No team has ever been an uglier winner than the Australian cricket team. I absolutely adored cricket as a child, but my love for it faded when Steve Waugh became Captain, and it's never fully recovered from that time.
Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I'd like to think this little dose of shame can bring some humility back to Australian cricket. Maybe, after we've reflected on what we've become, we'll think a bit more carefully about who we'd actually like to be.
And one more thing. If we think our national shame is a bit of ball-tampering in a glorified leisure pursuit - when we have people languishing in the purgatory of offshore detention in clear violation of United Nations resolutions, I think it's time for us to have a good long hard look at ourselves.
There's one heck of a lot more substance in our national soul than that which can be expressed by bat and ball. Let's hope we can find it.